A billionaire's son in India says he has room for the descendants of Pablo Escobar's notorious hippos. Anant Ambani, whose father runs Reliance Industries, has formally asked Colombia to pause plans to kill dozens of the so-called "cocaine hippos" and instead let him move 80 of them to his Vantara wildlife center in western India, reports CBS News. The hippos, descendants of animals the drug kingpin imported in the 1980s, have multiplied along Colombia's Magdalena River, attacking locals and damaging the ecosystem, leading the government to label them an invasive species and consider culling them. The animals are the only wild hippos outside Africa.
Ambani's father, Mukesh Ambani, is Asia's richest man, with a fortune estimated at almost $96 billion, the BBC reports. Ambani says his team has sent Bogota a veterinary-led relocation plan that includes capturing and flying the hippos to Gujarat, then housing them in a specially designed habitat on land next to Reliance's giant Jamnagar oil refinery, where summer temperatures regularly top 100 degrees. "At the heart of this proposal is Vantara's belief that every life matters and that we have a shared responsibility to protect life wherever possible," the zoo's CEO said in a letter to Colombia's environment minister, promising to give the herd "lifelong care."
Vantara, billed as one of the world's largest rescue and conservation centers, already holds hundreds of elephants, big cats, crocodiles, and other species, a scale that has drawn scrutiny from experts and protesters in India. Animal advocates in Colombia, long opposed to killing the hippos, say they support nonlethal options but warn the animals' growing numbers are putting native species and rivers at risk.
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